José Pastor is a young guy trying to put together a group of real vignerons in Spain. Someone was going to eventually try to do such a thing and thank goodness it is finally happening.
José and his company have a group of growers touring America. David Bowler Selections, one of our competitors, is having a trade tasting on June 2nd. I plan on going if I'm not too sick from Chemotherapy. Nobody likes a guy sick on Chemotherapy at their tasting.
They will then be in San Francisco at a Farm Wine Imports tasting on June 4th. Farm Wine Imports distributes our wines in California and there are rumors that there are shady dealings between our company and Farm. I won't be attending that tasting.
They'll also be visiting our friends at Triage Wines in Seattle on the 8th of June and Portland on the 9th.
I think the scene in Spain is evolving where finally there are vignerons sick of spoof and importers sick of being spoof delivery machines. Not everybody's goal in life is to sell labels to some other mmonster company. Thankfully, there are still vignerons and importers who live, breath and drink real wine.
Still a mystery to most
I've made the argument that Spanish wines are the Australian wines of Europe. Most of the people I've discussed this notion with know exactly what I'm referring to.
Of course, an Australian wine importer friend of mine tells me that the U.S. doesn't see the "best" Australian wines, for the most part. We get a lot of export-only labels from Oz, as well as Spain.